D200 eyes outside communications firm

Wheaton Warrenville Community Unit School District 200 board members are considering a $49,500 contract with an outside firm for a "community engagement process." (Quan Truong, Chicago Tribune)

Wheaton Warrenville Community Unit School District 200 has tried phone surveys, Internet surveys and community forums.

But, school officials say, that just hasn't been enough. It is still a challenge to figure out what the community wants.

The board of education is now weighing a $49,500 contract with an outside firm, Unicom, to conduct a "community engagement process." It's an effort the district believes may open a conversation with residents to see what their priorities are, what they'd be willing to support and what they're willing to trade off.

Superintendent Brian Harris calls it a "reset button."

"It's been a long time since we've done a very concentrated community outreach to all our stakeholders to get input on where we're headed with some of our programs and facilities," he said, at a recent board meeting.

The efforts are fueled in part by a failed referendum in the spring, when voters rejected the district's request to raise taxes to build a new Jefferson Early Childhood Center.

"We have some very specific problems going forward that we'll need an entire community support for," said Rosemary Swanson, board member, at the meeting. "Jefferson is one of a couple of substantial facility needs that we just can't pull together in our budget."

The traditional methods of reaching the community haven't worked as well as hoped, school officials said. The phone survey only reaches some of the residents and it can be hard to get them to respond via e-mail. Also, those methods involve a question-and-answer type of format, which doesn't help open a dialogue for ideas.

As for community forums, it is hard to get residents to attend.

Last year, the district sent out mailings to every resident, informing them of forums related to the Jefferson referendum.

"The participation was very low," said Jim Vroman, who sits on the district's newly formed community engagement committee. "Many of the same people attend each of these forums and how meaningful the comments we got and whether they were representative of the community is somewhat questionable."

One of the main goals of hiring an outside firm is to reach a demographic that has historically been more difficult to engage, such as the 75 percent of residents who do not have children attending school in the district.

"We're going to need their support and their input to sustain what we want to achieve going forward," said Jim Gambiani, board member, at the meeting.

But at least one board member, Jim Mathieson questioned whether the outside firm would be able to give the district more than generic answers and whether it was worth the $50,000 price tag.

"I want an end product that can be used by us to make decisions that is totally community based. I don't want to be surprised like we were with the Jefferson referendum," he said.

The board asked the community engagement committee to do more research with other districts that have contracted with the firm to see what their options were and look at the results they achieved through the survey.

The issue will be discussed again at the next meeting on Oct. 23, but members likely won't vote until at least November.